


Elayna Aan Zee

by zetaophiuchi (ryuujitsu)



Category: WTFock | Skam (Belgium)
Genre: Aged Up, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst, Beach House, Bed & Breakfast, Bipolar Disorder, Drama, Endless Ocean Metaphors, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Manic Pixie Dream Boy, Mental Health Issues, Schizoaffective Disorder, Sexual Content, Suicidal Ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 08:34:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21455092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryuujitsu/pseuds/zetaophiuchi
Summary: “Good morning,” a voice sings out. “Is that my coffee?”Robbe pivots. There’s a boy in the bed, his thatch of white hair shining over the edge of the battered old laptop that he’s propped up on his knees.“What the fuck?” Robbe says.One weekend on the North Sea. Robbe takes over the management of his mother’s seaside hotel following her unexpected hospitalization and encounters a mysterious guest.
Relationships: Robbe Ijzermans/Sander Driesen
Comments: 17
Kudos: 125





	Elayna Aan Zee

**Author's Note:**

> WTFock am I doing! This is a short fic based on episodes 1-3 of season 3. [FLWhite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite) and I were bouncing AU ideas off each other and liked The One Where Robbe Is Actually a Hotel Manager. (Except he isn’t really.) Set in 2019, but they’re a bit older—Robbe has just finished university.
> 
>   * writing this made me realize just how badly I have misremembered every single David Bowie lyric
>   * we’re not talking about what happened on Friday
>   * Margrit means pearl
> 
> If you are struggling with depression, anxiety, or thoughts of self-harm, please be gentle with yourself. It can and will get better.
> 
>   * <https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/chat/>
>   * <https://thelifelinecanada.ca/help/call/>

Elayna Aan Zee, situated on the North Sea and the Franco-Belgian border, is a row of small white-washed cabins jutting up along the dunes like the spine of a long-dead animal. It’s somewhere between a motel and a ruin, and it doesn’t serve breakfast. It was the dream of Elayna IJzermans, née Bossuyt—a crazy dream, a dream perhaps worth reexamining, considering her recent hospitalization—and the weight that now hangs around the neck of her son, Robbe IJzermans, freshly arrived this morning from Antwerp on a six o’clock train.

It’s November. The coast is desolate this time of year: the sea is gray, and the dunes are dun-colored, studded with seagrass, brown and bristling in a cold wind. Robbe pulls the flapping edges of his jacket more tightly around himself as he wriggles his mother’s skeleton key into the lock of the last cabin.

His throat has been stripped by the cold and wind. In the proprietor’s office, where he’s left his bag, there’s a space heater and a cup of tea steeping. He’s thirsty for the tea, parched. He imagines drinking it down in three long grateful pulls. He turns the key and opens the door.

Elayna has decorated her cabins idiosyncratically. Robbe has worked his way through mermaids, seashells, lobsters, pirate ships, nautical stripes, and coconuts and tropical fish. In this cabin, the theme is anchors, and the curtains are yellow.

He steps inside and trips. His fingertips rasp along peeling wallpaper as he catches himself and looks back: the culprit is a suitcase lying open on the ragged beige carpet, clothing spilling from it like innards. The door swings out, creaking in the wind; the curtains flutter.

“Good morning,” a voice sings out. “Is that my coffee?”

Robbe pivots. There’s a boy in the bed, his thatch of white hair shining over the edge of the battered old laptop that he’s propped up on his knees.

“What the fuck?” Robbe says.

The bedsheets rustle. The laptop is lifted and set aside. The boy looks Robbe over from head to toe, up, down, up again. His eyes are green, his gaze appreciative. It lingers on Robbe a heartbeat too long to be polite.

“Hello,” the boy says. His mouth curls up at the corners. “And you are?”

“I,” Robbe says. He shivers. The sea is buffeting him with cold. He fumbles behind his back for the doorknob; he can’t find it. “I work here.”

“_Do _you,” the boy says, with lively interest. He sits up, and Robbe surveys him without meaning to: a trim body, a knowing smile, beautiful hands with long, elegant fingers. “Since when? Did you bring my breakfast?”

“What?”

“Coffee?” the boy prompts. “Bacon? Eggs, baked beans? Where is it? I’m starving.”

“We don’t serve breakfast,” Robbe says. “We’re not—we don’t serve it.”

“We?” the boy says. “Where’s Elayna?”

“She was called away unexpectedly,” Robbe says. The green gaze has yet to waver. He swallows. “You’re not in the computer.”

“The computer.”

“The—” he stutters “—the booking computer.”

“Elayna doesn’t use the computer,” the boy says. He looks smug. “She doesn’t like computers. She has my name in her little red book. It’s S. Driesen—Sander. The third weekend of every month. You’d know that if you really worked here. You’d know I get coffee and bacon and eggs and baked beans. Are you actually a manager? Are you actually—”

“Excuse me,” he interrupts. “Excuse me. How do you know Elayna?”

“I just do,” Sander says. He smirks. “How do _you_ know her?”

“I’m her son,” Robbe says.

The smirk slips. “Has something happened?”

Margrit had called the night before. _I’m taking your mother to the hospital._

He’d been working late, compiling spreadsheets; he’d watched the sun set across the hall, through the director’s window. He answered his phone in a nachtwinkel by the canal, browsing through carrot salads, thinking nothing of it: Margrit often called, to check in or to say hello.

He sprinted through a corridor of memories. All he could remember was that his mother had been excited about getting new curtains for the hotel, reciting the names of colors to him over the phone: sunlight, buttercream, buttercup, lemon drop. But Margrit was a nurse, so she’d know.

_Has something happened?_

_It’s her angels again_, Margrit said, calm, _they’ve been telling her to jump into the sea, to be cleansed._

_Fuck—_

_Robbe—_

_Fuck._

_It’s okay, Robbe,_ Margrit said. _Don’t worry. She knew something was wrong. She made sure to tell me. We’re following her plan._

_I’ll be there tomorrow_, he said. _On the first train, I’ll—_

_You don’t have to_, Margrit said. _Take your time. She’s in good hands._

_Tomorrow_, he repeated, and after they hung up he emailed his manager, and Milan, and went home to pack.

At the hospital in De Panne the next day, his mother hadn’t wanted to see him.

“She thinks you’re going to make her give up the hotel,” Margrit said. She was a wiry blonde woman in her fifties, Elayna’s best friend in De Panne of two or three years, and Robbe’s honorary aunt. There were usually lines around her gray eyes from barely suppressed laughter, but today her twinkle was gone, and she looked tired.

“Is it the hotel that’s caused this?” Robbe said, and, “Fuck,” and, “Sorry.”

He’d gone to the godforsaken hotel anyway, to lock the place up and to have a look at it, to try to discover what had driven his mother into the arms of her angels, and instead he’d found Sander, as beautiful as the first frost, lolling about in bed and demanding coffee.

In the proprietor’s office, the space heater is working double time, wheezing and gusting at his feet like a little black pug. His mother’s ancient computer is restarting, cranking through a series of updates. The sea crashes in his ears.

He texts Milan. _I’m going to be here a little longer_, he says. _At least until Monday. There’s a guest. Who the fuck wants baked beans for breakfast?_

Milan replies: _Is that a euphemism?_

A blast of cold. A shadow falls across the desk. He looks up.

“I’m giving you zero stars on Booking,” Sander says. “You, personally. You, Robbe IJzermans.”

Robbe resists the urge to swear at him, at his eyes, the color of the North Sea in a storm, at his overly familiar smile and the clothes he’s wearing, the leather jacket and tight jeans, at the way he’s chosen to drape himself, just like that, against the filing cabinet. He swears more generally, at the world at large; at his tea, which has gone cold.

“Why?”

“There’s no food in the refrigerator at all.”

_Oh, Mama, what were you doing?_ Robbe thinks. _What were you eating?_

He says, surly, “I don’t know what you expect me to do about it.”

“Get up, for one,” Sander says. “We’re going to the grocery store.”

The grocery store is feeding classic rock through its pipes, inundating them with tinny drumbeats and guitar riffs. Sander hums along. The song changes, and Sander’s face does, too, lighting up like a floodlight.

“Do you know David Bowie?” he says.

Robbe scoffs. “Of course I know David Bowie. Who doesn’t?”

“Kids today,” Sander says.

“Kids today,” Robbe repeats. “How young do you think I am?”

“Hey, babe,” Sander sings at him, in a low, pleased voice. “Your hair’s all right.”

“And my face?” Robbe says. He’s thawing. He’s smiling. He can’t help it, he thinks. Fuck, of course he can’t help it: just look at Sander. Just look at him. “What are you saying about my face? I had to get up at four today, you know.”

Sander winks at him. He throws a loaf of bread into the cart. Rebel Rebel circles into another verse. “Hey, babe,” Sander sings. “Let’s stay out tonight.”

Back at Elayna Aan Zee, Sander rattles around the kitchen, flinging open cabinet doors and leaving drawers open. “When’s the last time you ate, hey?”

22:00, Robbe thinks. Carrot salad, and it had tasted sour. His stomach growls. He looks at the spread on the counter: the two chipped, mismatched plates with their lobster motifs, the slices of bread, the slices of cheese.

“This looks extremely healthy,” he says.

“There’s ketchup around here somewhere,” Sander says. “I know there is.”

It’s like university all over again, Robbe thinks, as Sander plays Under Pressure on his phone and hunts for condiments. The middle of the night in the student commons, making cheese toasties on Robbe’s illicit hot plate, still drunk, laughing at Jens’ aversion to bread crusts, telling Aaron he was going to die of scurvy. It was the week after he met Noor and three years after his mother’s last hospitalization, three years after the divorce, one year after she’d opened up Elayna Aan Zee; he’d thought they were finally in the clear, that he could be normal, that they could breathe again.

“Ketchup,” he repeats.

“Yes, ketchup,” Sander says. He thumps a bottle on the counter. “Voilà,” he says.

“That bottle is older than I am.”

“_I’m_ older than you are,” Sander says.

“Barely,” Robbe concedes. Sander is twenty-four, just one year older. He disclosed this information earlier in the snack aisle, filling his arms with bags of potato chips. “So what?”

“So trust me,” Sander says. “Ketchup equals tomatoes equals vegetables equals vitamins. Problem solved.”

“Tomatoes are fruits,” he tells Sander. “I don’t know how you’ve managed to survive so long.”

“Me neither,” Sander says. “Tell you what, we can put chips in these sandwiches.”

“What? _Why_?”

Sander winks at him. “Potatoes are root vegetables.”

“Stop,” Robbe says, laughing, and as he laughs he thinks to himself, _That’s the second wink. The second wink: it means something. _“God,” he says, “just stop.”

He can’t remember the last time he felt so cheerful. Not even with the boys was he so cheerful. He watches Sander thwacking the bottle, trying to get dried-up ketchup to flow, and grins.

Sander cuts the first toastie into triangles and feeds one half to Robbe with his fingers.

“Good?” he says, and Robbe nods.

They eat half the loaf and all of the cheese and recycle the ketchup bottle, and then they go for a walk along the dunes, side by side, keeping their hands warm in their pockets. The wind whips through the seagrass, and the sea washes away their tracks.

“There’s a paintball range nearby,” Robbe says. “I don’t know if you know that.”

Sander snorts. “I didn’t. I didn’t think paintball was still a thing.”

“They’ve been trying to buy my mother out for a year,” Robbe says. “They want to knock down the cabins, expand their shooting range.”

“What?” Sander says. “Turn them down. You can’t let them.”

“It might be the best thing,” Robbe says. “For—for my mother. To sell out.”

“No,” Sander says. “No way. She loves this place. You know she does.” He glances at Robbe, and his green eyes are probing. “What really happened? To Elayna? You can tell me.”

His feet shift in the dunes. He shakes his head. “I told you,” he says. “It was stress. Just stress. She had to take some time for herself. That’s all.” A gull lands in the distance. He changes the subject. “What are you doing here? On the off season, too—it’s so gloomy.”

“I come here to clear my head,” Sander says. “Sometimes it’s too much, the town…”

“But why here?” Robbe says. “Why my mother’s…why Elayna Aan Zee?”

“I like it.”

“You like it?” Robbe says. “You like the—the shells and the pirates?” And the wallpaper flaking away in the cold and the damp, he adds to himself, and the cracking plaster, and the flimsy walls that shake in the wind?

Sander shrugs and smiles. “I just like it. Is that so unbelievable?”

“It’s nicer in the summer. With the fair and the carousel and the sunshine and the ice cream.”

“It’s _different_ in the summer,” Sander says. “Not better or worse. Just different. And I like it in all seasons. Even when the wind is howling. It holds good memories. You know? It’s the same for you, isn’t it?”

“What,” Robbe says, “did you have your first kiss here, or something?”

The clouds drift. The gulls shriek. Sander stops walking and turns to look at him, measuring, and he starts to blush.

“I wanted to,” Sander says. He runs a hand through his hair, trying and failing to smooth it in the blustering wind; the back of his hand brushes the back of Robbe’s hand as he returns it to his pocket. “But I didn’t get the chance.”

Some of Robbe’s happiest childhood memories are of the beach at De Panne, in the years before Elayna Aan Zee, when he and his mother and father still lived together in a flat in Antwerp and drove out to the sea together in a rental car. He remembers the long thin line dividing a vast blue sky from a vast blue sea, the firm, warm strength of his mother’s hand, the wild scramble up and down the dunes, the salty, oily smell of potatoes frying, and the salty, briny taste of mussels and oysters. He rode the carousel, giggling at the blond plastic mane of the Palomino beneath him. He ate ice creams and waffles. When he cut his palms tugging at the tough seagrass, his mother tended to him, tutted at him; she laughed as he ran into the water and back out again, screaming at the cold.

_Robbe_, she says. Robbe opens his eyes.

It’s dark. He checks his phone: 16:43 and one new voicemail from Margrit. _She’s sleeping. Thank God._

Sander is sleeping, too, lying on the couch beside Robbe with his hair mussed and his mouth slack.

Robbe admires him, the soot-dark sweep of his eyelashes, his clear skin, faintly freckled, his perfect earlobes. He gets up carefully and tiptoes out. In the kitchen, he finds a packet of mostly pulverized chocolate biscuits shoved in the back of a cabinet and fills a Thermos with coffee. He wedges the biscuits and Thermos under his arm, gathers up the half-eaten bags of chips, and comes back to the office, opening and closing the door with his foot.

Sander is sitting up, rubbing his eyes. “Robbe?”

He transfers everything to one hand and raps the door with his knuckles.

“Room service,” he says, and Sander laughs.

Night falls. They order pizza, lie horizontally across Sander’s bed in Sander’s cabin, and watch a Leonardo DiCaprio movie. The Wi-Fi connection is bad at Elayna Aan Zee; the video stutters, freezes, reloads. The scream of the wind collapses into pitiful moaning; the roar of the sea dims to a murmur. The darkness swallows them up.

Sander asks, “What do you think it would be like to be the last two people left in the world?”

“Watching _Inception_?”

“After a nuclear strike.”

“Sander.” He chuckles. “We’d be obliterated.”

“It hits Brussels. We’re far enough away that it doesn’t touch us,” Sander says. “We creep back later like the animals of Chernobyl. We become radioactive. We develop superpowers.”

“Such as?”

“Super speed. Sticky webs.” Sander’s eyes glitter in the light of his laptop. “Night vision.”

He can feel the heat of Sander’s body. Their elbows are already touching. And the bed is old, sunken; if he shifts just a bit more to the left, they’ll collide. He reaches over and shuts Sander’s laptop. “What can you see?” he whispers.

“Nothing,” Sander says. “Your eyes,” he says.

He isn’t sure who leans in first. But when Sander draws back, sucking in a long breath like a diver coming up for air, Robbe follows. Greedy, he inhales and lunges and swallows up Sander’s laughter, which bursts between them like a rush of bubbles.

“I’ve seen you before,” Sander says. He traces the shell of Robbe’s ear with his fingers. “Three years ago. It was the third weekend of August. There was a full moon.”

Robbe casts his mind back. August, 2016. He’d come to stay for the month. That week, he’d helped his mother replace some furniture. He'd done a little tidying. He’d been preoccupied with hinges and IKEA and carpet cleaner. He spent the weekend sweeping and scrubbing until his hands were sore. On Saturday he’d snuck out to call Noor and drink a beer on the beach. Noor hadn’t picked up, and the night was warm and sticky. At midnight he’d taken off all his clothes and waded into the water.

“Elayna talks about you all the time, you know,” Sander says. “She’s so proud of you. Her son in Antwerp. Her son the university student. Her son the graduate. Her son the analyst. But I didn’t realize you were the same person I saw that night.”

“She has pictures of me,” Robbe says. “There’s one in the office. I saw it. In a silver frame. On the—”

“I never saw you clearly,” Sander says. “You were standing in the water. I saw your profile—” he turns his head, evading Robbe’s kiss “—I saw your profile, like this. You were staring out over the sea, bathed in moonlight.”

“_Bathed_ in moonlight,” he repeats. He tries to sound teasing, but he’s flustered; his heart is hammering, battering his ribcage.

He’d broken up with Noor that week, the same day he returned to Antwerp. She’d cried. He’d cried. But the sea had shaken something loose in him, eroded his shell until he couldn’t hide the truth any longer. He’d floated beneath the moon at De Panne, naked, vulnerable: himself at last.

“Your hair was longer,” Sander says. “And wet. And the moon was like a halo behind your head. I thought you were a creature from the sea. Elayna said you must have been an angel.”

Elayna and her wicked, cruel angels, the ones who try to compel her to sink to the bottom of the sea. Robbe swallows. But Sander is still talking, and with the silver net of his voice he pulls Robbe back to the surface and keeps him there.

“I started coming back every full moon,” Sander says. “To look for you.” He cups Robbe’s face in his hands. “Oh, you pretty thing,” he murmurs, and Robbe closes his eyes and lets Sander kiss him.

They take off their clothes and rearrange themselves in the bed, skin to skin, and Robbe straddles Sander and bites his soft earlobes, smiling at the groan that rumbles through Sander’s chest. He kisses Sander’s ribs. He kisses Sander’s hips. He kisses the tender, bitter edge of Sander and feels him twitch. _Robbe. _He takes Sander’s hands and lets Sander guide him; he lets Sander surge against him like ocean water and grind himself against his lips. Then Robbe opens his mouth, panting, and drinks Sander down.

In Sander’s arms, he’s wanton: he twists this way and that, spreads his legs, clings so tightly that Sander laughs and says he can’t move, and doesn’t Robbe want Sander to touch him? _Please_, Robbe says.

He drifts into a dream as Sander wipes them both off, with brisk, circular motions that make him think of the application of sunscreen. They’re sitting under a red umbrella. The light is rosy. There is no one else on the beach. He brushes Sander’s hand away and runs down to the sea.

He wakes up cold, to four missed calls and three voicemails: Margrit doesn’t like texting. He runs outside, pulling on clothing—his pants, his shirt, his jacket. Not his shoes. The door slams behind him. It’s drizzling. He paces as the phone rings, swearing. “Come on, come on,” he says, “come on. Fuck. Fuck!”

“Robbe?”

“What’s wrong?” he says. “What’s happened?”

“Where were you?” Margrit says. “I was worried. That was quite a storm last night. Did you lose power?”

“Is she okay?”

Margrit inhales. “She’s fine,” she says. “Last night was tough. She was asking for you.”

“Oh, fuck,” he says. “I’m sorry. I—sorry. I’m here now. Let me talk to her now.”

But Margrit hesitates. “They’re going to take her to the psychiatric ward in an hour,” she says. “They made an assessment. She’ll have to stay for the weekend. Maybe the rest of the week—maybe longer. They’re going to adjust her medication.”

“God,” he says. He rubs a hand over his face. “Okay. Okay. Sorry, Margrit. Thank you.”

“I’ll go home after they finish her intake paperwork,” Margrit says. “I need some sleep myself. I gave your mobile number to the hospital. They had it already, it turns out. In her file.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Get some rest. Sorry.”

“Keep your phone on,” Margrit says. “Okay?”

“Hey, Mister Manager,” Sander says, as Robbe comes banging back in. He grins. “Last night—phew. Excellent tongue action. Five stars on Booking.” He leans in for a kiss as Robbe swerves by the bed, but Robbe veers away.

Sander recoils, too. “What’s wrong?” he says.

“Now’s not a good time,” Robbe says. He finds his socks, his own shoes. “You want to know where my mother is? She’s in the hospital. She’s ill. Elayna. She’s sick. She’s delusional. She thinks it’s the fucking end of days. I have to go to the hospital now. I have to see her before they lock her up for the week.”

Sander sits up. “I’ll go with you.”

“Don’t,” Robbe says.

“What’s wrong?” Sander says again, quieter.

“I fucked up,” Robbe says. “Last night, we shouldn’t have—_I_ shouldn’t have. God,” he says, “God, fuck. She’s ill, and I—and I—with you, I—”

“Hey,” Sander says. “Hey, Robbe. Stop. Look at me.”

Robbe hisses through his teeth and looks at him. Sander is putting on his clothes, zipping up his hoodie, swinging his legs out of bed. He meets Robbe’s eyes, calm, unblinking. He says, “Listen, Elayna is going to be okay.”

“Fuck! You don’t know that.”

“I do,” Sander says.

“How,” he says, flat.

“She has a treatment plan, doesn’t she?” Sander says. “She has that friend of hers. She has you. We talked about it, in group.”

“Group?”

“Her support group. Our support group.” Sander pauses. “I don’t see angels, though,” he says. “For me, it’s my thoughts. They spiral out of control. I have manias, depressions. Stress is a trigger. Work is a trigger. Deadlines.” He offers a stiff, uncomfortable rictus of a grin. “That’s how I came to know Elayna—that’s why I stay here. She gives me a discount. She says I remind her of—of her son. Of you.”

“I’m not a fucking headcase,” Robbe snaps. “I suppose you egg her on, you humor her, you talk to her about her evil fucking angels and your—your—your sea creatures.”

Sander flinches. “Fuck,” he says.

“You lied to me,” Robbe says. “You told me you like to stay here just because.”

“Of course I lied to you,” Sander says. “I was afraid you’d react like this. Just like this. Fuck, Robbe. If that’s really how you feel, I pity Elayna. I thought of all people her son would be more understanding.”

“Understanding?” he sneers. “I didn’t have a childhood because of this fucking illness, these demons that sit on her shoulders and whisper in her ears and tell her to drown herself because she’s a bad person, because she deserves to die. Do you know what it’s like to come home from school and see your mother arguing with things that aren’t there? To have her taken away from you, again and again?”

“Robbe—”

“And you think it’s your fault,” he says. He falters. “If—if only you loved her properly. If only you were more studious. If only you were less—if only you were _normal_, she’d be normal too. You’re a kid, you don’t know better. And no one tells you otherwise.”

Sander reaches for him. “Robbe, you know Elayna loves you,” he says urgently. “You know she thinks you’re perfect just the way you are.”

Robbe slaps his hand away.

“No!” he says. “No, don’t fucking touch me. Don’t put words in my mother’s mouth. She’s not your mother. She’s mine. She’s _mine_. Why don’t you go home to your own mother and leave mine alone. Fuck you, Sander. I pity—I pity the people who love you.”

He bites his lip. He looks up.

Sander is staring at him, pale.

“You don’t mean that,” Sander says finally. His throat works as he swallows. “I know you don’t. You’re upset. You’re worried about Elayna. You feel guilty, maybe. But you don’t mean what you just said. Apologize,” he says. “Apologize to me. Apologize, Robbe.” His voice cracks. “Please.”

Robbe says, “Leave me alone.”

He runs into Margrit just as she’s leaving the hospital, head lowered as she forges into the downpour, but it’s already too late: they’ve taken his mother away. There’s nothing more to do but confirm his contact information with the front desk. Margrit squeezes his hand.

When he gets back to the hotel, heavy-eyed and remorseful, there’s a key on the front desk—Sander’s key. He sprints to the anchor cabin and unlocks the door.

The bed is made, the curtains tied back. The room is empty. Sander is gone.

The water in the shower house is so cold it seems to burn him. He stands beneath the icy jet until his skin grows numb. Shivering, he climbs out and puts on the same clothes; still shivering, he bundles the bedsheets of the anchor cabin into a laundry bag and hauls them into town. When the sheets are ready, he remakes the bed, unflinching. He vacuums and dusts and locks the cabins up. He sets up a cot in the proprietor’s office. He goes to bed early, gets up early, and returns to Antwerp amid the wash of Monday commuters.

A week passes, then another. The hospital sends him text updates. Margrit calls twice. He works late; he eats his vegetables; he looks across the hall through the director’s window and imagines the sea.

Margrit wasn’t certain his mother would be released in time for Christmas, but on Wednesday, the eleventh of December, Elayna IJzermans transitions to outpatient care. She spends the first two days of her freedom with Margrit. On Friday, she returns to Elayna Aan Zee.

“You did a wonderful job looking after her,” she tells Robbe.

“Thanks, Mama.”

“I’m so grateful. She looks better than she did when I left her.”

“Mama, that’s not true.”

“You must have been so busy. Did you meet with the guests? The guest, I should say. Margrit says she didn’t know there was someone. I wrote it down in my little book, of course, but things were so frantic…”

He gulps. “Yes,” he says. “He was worried about you. Sander—Meneer Driesen.”

“He’s a good boy,” his mother says. “He reminds me of you a bit—a dreamer. His circumstances have been difficult. I was so happy I could give him a place to stay. Some shelter, you know. From the hubbub of life. Yes, the hubbub.”

“Mama,” he says. “I’m sorry for what I have to say. But this latest episode, don’t you think…”

She sighs. “It was the summer season, sweetheart. It undid me. She’s become popular on the Internet. People say such nice things on Booking. They love the décor, the location. Word spreads and suddenly…”

“I know the hotel is special,” he says. “I know it’s your special place. But I think—Margrit and I both think—you need to hire someone to help you. At least during the high season.”

“Oh, Robbe…”

“Talk it over with your psychiatrist,” he says. “With your—your group. Can you promise me you’ll do that? It would make me feel better, Mama. Since I’m far away.”

His mother makes a noncommittal noise. Her attention wanders. “Wasn’t it nice, Robbe, that summer you came to stay?” she says wistfully. “All of August I had you. We ate all of your favorite things. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do that again?”

“I don’t know if I can, Mama,” he says. There’s a lump in his throat. His voice creaks around it. “I haven’t worked a full year yet.”

“Take a leave of absence,” she says.

He laughs, quick and cracked. “Mama.”

“Maybe next year, then,” she says.

“Maybe next year,” he says.

It _would_ be nice, he thinks. The third weekend of August: a full moon, a red beach umbrella, and Sander.

“You sound sad today, Robbe,” his mother says. “What is it? Is it because of me?”

He looks across the Antwerp street to ground himself. Here he is, steady on both legs, on staid black pavement that doesn’t undulate, and the water he sees is the fresh green-black water of the river.

As he gazes, sunlight spikes off the windows of a passing tram and lances his eyes.

He wipes away the film of tears. He says, “No, Mama.” He says, “I love you.” He says, “I’ll call you again tomorrow. Okay?” He says goodbye.

On the third weekend of December, Sander finds him in Antwerp; he arrives at Robbe’s apartment just as Robbe is unlocking the front door and calls his name.

Robbe spins around.

“How,” he says. His bag slips off his shoulder and swings in the crook of his arm. “Oh—Mama.”

“Elayna,” Sander says, “yes.”

He waits. Behind him, the buildings blur into a gray mass and swim in Robbe’s vision, ebbing and flowing like the tides.

“I’m sorry,” Robbe says. His voice shakes. The clouds have parted and the late afternoon sun is shining down on Sander, on his white hair, his steady green stare. “I’m sorry. Sorry—so sorry. I freaked out. You were amazing. It was unreal, all of it…just amazing. But it was too much. With everything going on, with Mama. It was like Chernobyl in my head, and I…and I…”

He mimes a mushroom cloud. He mimics the roar of the explosion. He looks at Sander, at the slow curl of his smile.

“But fuck Chernobyl,” he says. He tries to inhale and gasps instead. “Fuck it.”

“Fuck it,” Sander agrees, and Robbe bites his lip and blinks, eyes smarting, and Sander hurries to him. He backs Robbe quickly into the vestibule and kicks the door shut.

“Thank you,” Robbe says. “Thank you. For coming. For finding me again.”

“I knew long ago,” Sander whispers, as Robbe holds him, kisses him, frantic, his cheek, his ear, his throat. He drops his bag and slides his fingers into Sander’s hair. He squeezes his eyes shut and holds on tight. “I knew from the start. I knew when I saw you in the moonlight, I said to myself, he’s the one.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked, please [reblog](https://hallo-catfish.tumblr.com/post/189107436249/elayna-aan-zee-zetaophiuchi-ryuujitsu-wtfock)!
> 
> Many thanks, as always, to [FLWhite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite) for their suggestions and edits. Read their WTFock fic here: [you're the first](https://xiangyu.tumblr.com/post/188966591902/youre-the-first), [tuesday night fever](https://xiangyu.tumblr.com/post/188754093982/tuesday-night-fever).


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